4.85m at the mo but that's not tape checked. Considering it started a bit late it might be slightly lower than that as that would include a few minutes of Strictly currently.

Again, very poor competition on the other side (4.04m for the rugby). XFactor returns next week.

4.85 million for last nights Doctor Who...

4.63m is being reported on GB as the tape checked figure.

EDIT: Confrimed in the ratings thread now. That's the actual figure.

Slightly up year-on-year for once, on Flatline (4.6).

A bit of an improvement on last week. Hopefully this upward trend continues.

Sorry, I was being flippant Flippancy probably doesn't come across well in written text. Probably bad form to mix politics and Doctor Who anyway

Finally a decent move in the right direction, let's hope that continues.

Second for the day and out-rating everything on ITV is surely a tick for the Beeb this week, however you look at it.

I think the combination of no England in the Rugby World Cup and having Maisie Williams in the episode helped.

Which should also help next week's ratings

Looking at the approximate viewer share for Series 9 right now, the show seems to have definitely settled on a new level of figures this year.

The Magician's Apprentice - 26.3% (19:40)
The Witch's Familiar - 22.9% (19:45)
Under the Lake - 22.0% (20:25)
Before the Flood - 21.5% (20:25)
The Girl Who Died - 23.2% (20:20)

The Girl Who Died percentage will likely drop ever so slightly in accordance with the tape-checked figure. This is notably lower than any series before it, however it should be considered that Series 8 was scoring the same sort of figures in its latter half, and was also being broadcast particularly late. Compare the earlier episodes and their earlier broadcasts to the sudden decline from The Caretaker onwards...

Deep Breath - 37.9% (19:50)
Into the Dalek - 30.4% (19:30)
Robot of Sherwood - 31.1% (19:25)
Listen - 29.6% (19:30)
Time Heist - 29.6% (19:30)
The Caretaker - 26.4% (20:30)
Kill the Moon - 26.6% (20:30)
Mummy on the Orient Express - 26.6% (20:35)
Flatline - 25.5% (20:25)
In the Forest of the Night - 26.3% (20:20)
Dark Water - 27.4% (20:15)
Death in Heaven - 28.6% (20:00)

No episode since Time Heist has performed better than it - even the finales that got a significant bump, likely due to the Master reveal and the finale status of the story. The remainder of the series faced a permanent drop below 29% whereas previously that was a number the show only narrowly dropped below on three occasions (The Lodger, The God Complex and Nightmare in Silver).

Series 9 seems to have faced a smaller decline than the one in Series 8, but it's a decline all the same. It stands to reason that many complaining about the late schedules last year would have stuck out the remainder of a series they started, but may not bother with a new series of the show that continues to be broadcast post-8pm - and that's without accounting for the difficult schedules this year from the Rugby World Cup. At any rate, the time seems to be a huge contributor to a lower viewer share. It makes me wonder how a Series 9 episode would fare if it were to have finished before 8pm. It does also pose the questions of whether autumn is any good for Doctor Who these days, and indeed whether or not the BBC cares about any of this or is quite satisfied with the show having a lower viewer share to put it up against the toughest competition.

The fluctuations of live viewing can be seen in the figures for Doctor Who AND Casualty

Oct 3 DW 3.7m Casualty 3.8m
Oct 10 DW 4.4m Casualty 4.4m
Oct 17 DW 4.6m Casualty 4.6m

Effectively each week both shows have the same live audience every week, and the fluctuations are entirely down to what else is on, rather than the episode or publicity that week.

Those percentage shares look to be of a far greater concern than the actual ratings numbers.

Although the XFactor is back next week and will provide much greater competition for viewers.

They're still strong enough. I mean a 20% figure means one in five people would be watching Doctor Who rather than anything else on television at the time, which isn't a phenomenal rating but isn't too shoddy when statistically speaking less than 1 in 5 people are watching every other channel except for ITV. It just boils down to that competition again, and as pointed out by someone else, this decline in viewership is across multiple BBC shows so isn't necessarily a reflection of how they're critically being received. It's more an indication that ITV are firing on all cyllinders, and rather effectively so.

Overnight shares don't mean what they used to.

Bear in mind that the competition on the night can no longer be treated as if a matter of people selecting one option from what is live at any particular point.

For example - one person could (via PVR or on demand) watch Doctor Who, the rugby and Big Bang Theory, despite all being broadcast at the same time. If the viewing panel was formed by just them, then that would be a 33.3% share for each broadcast (during their clash period), despite being only one viewer.

It's that factor, where one viewer can account for the shares of multiple clashing broadcasts, that makes the share a poor measure of success. Even more so, when comparing the shares of different kinds of broadcast - a live rugby match will likely be watched live, a scripted show at any point in the evening.

This is why shares for most things have fallen, even where ratings are similar, compared to a few years ago.

Linked to this is the modern reality that competition for viewers on an evening is not just about the other channels any more. One thing that squeezes Doctor Who, on overnights, is that the evening is packed with populist viewing. Strictly is as much competition for those precious viewing hours, as the rugby or The X Factor are.

Agreed, there is a logic that after 2 hours of Strictly, some viewers may want/need to do other things than watch TV immediately afterwards!
Eat, put children to bed, etc

Or, according to the BBC announcer, visit Strictly's website instead of watching the following programme!

Or they do that while Strictly is broadcasting, and watch a recording of Strictly while Doctor Who is broadcasting. Thus another BBC One show squeezes out Doctor Who. Sometimes completely, sometimes to another day.

The problem is, even those of us who have grasped that overnights ≠ live, and that plenty of TV is consumed via timeshift after the day of broadcast (i.e. we're not tabloid journalists), often still fall prey to out of date thinking, from a time of more limited choice, no on demand, and limited ability to timeshift.

We can still talk about the opposition as if it's just one channel, or as if it's just the things that were broadcast live opposite our show on the day.

We still talk about share as if it matters (unless dealing with two opposing live broadcasts, share is increasingly meaningless), and when we do talk about share, we think it's all about things broadcast at the same time, or that falling share equals falling appeal (the biggest causes of falling share are timeshifting and increased channel availability).

Yes, but the reason Dr Who is in a popular timeslot on a popular night is because it used to be popular. Thats the point. Its losing popularity.

Precisely (especially if a large number of those Strictly viewers are also casual DW viewers)

I think at the end of this season it will be important to take into account that the opening episode didn't provide the 'bounce' for the average viewing figures that each season usually gets with episode one.

It looks to me as if we are (over all) getting the same viewing figures as season 8 now that the rugby is over. Even the overnights are getting back to where they were last year. So I do worry that the season average for 9 will be lower than 8 simply because of the season premiere.

I'm not saying we should manipulate the figures to make them look higher - ultimately, if the show's lost a million viewers year-on-year then it has lost a million viewers.

I am just concerned that it actually hasn't lost viewers over all but just had a poor start.

Even if you remove the s8 premiere from the averages, s8 is 1.07m ahead of s9 so far. The lowest final rating last year was 6.71m. The highest this year has been 6.54m so far (I would expect this week's to end up around that figure).

The high series premiere last year certainly does have an affect but it doesn't really make that much of a difference.

The Girl Who Died

Live: 3.846m
Live +VOSDAL: 4.852m
+ Day 1: 5.754m


(You can take about 170k off the figures above to take into account the slightly delayed start to DW)

Take off? That would be a low day 1 timeshift.